Is the game industry hopelessly broken?

Word from GDC 2005

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At this year's Game Developer's Conference developers are lamenting that the game industry has been warped beyond recognition:

Wal-Mart drives development decisions now. When publishers minimise risk by kow-towing to the retailers, you have a serious problem. When every game has to either be a blockbuster or a student film, we got a real problem. For my end of the game business all of our efforts are going into reaching a mainstream audience who may well even not be interested in what we do! My first game cost me 273,000 dollars. My next one is BLAH millions. How many of you work on games that make money? 4 out of 5 games lose money, according to one pundit who may be lying, admittedly. Can we do any worse if we just trusted the creative folks entirely instead of the publishers?

The game industry model is increasingly becoming like the movie industry model where most ventures cost millions and most lose money. The problem is that, unlike the movie industry where an indie film can be made at 1/1000th the cost of a big budget title, even indie games have to have reasonably good production values to be competitive. There is no "Blair Witch Project" scenario in the game industry -- i.e. a game that costs say $100,000 to make but makes $100 million.

As a result, the model where 4 out of 5 games losing money is death to indie game developers leaving us with only mega publishers churning out "More of the same IV".

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While the gaming industry has certainly fallen toward "Hollywood-itis" with it's dependance on bigger CGI to cover inept writing and lousy design work I do hold out hope that online distrobution and market forces will eventually wash the industry back towards quality. Much the same as Peter Jackson's movies were big budget, they were also quality works. Contrast that with the awful Star Wars movies (recent) and even though Lucas got some of us zombies to pay for a movie ticket he certainly hasn't been able to cash in with residual marketing and followups like LOTR has been able to do. Game companies can do the same trick.

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I might be alone on this one. I have no problem with the current trend. The games always had shit load of bugs. If games will continue this tradition, but look better, then it is fine with me. There will always be space for independent/small developers since there will always be a space to cover. They might be fewer over the years, but there will be there/here. The quality of both types of games will only get better. Capitalism works and as long as there is market for some type of games, there will be those willing to produce games/make money from that market. They will just have to become more efficient, tough luck.

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Yarlen

Join Date 01/2005

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Well, it's been no secret that the gaming industry as a whole wants to be thought of like Hollywood. We've got more game tie-ins with movies and games becoming movies than ever before. The net result is that by and large it's total garbage with few exceptions (i.e., either the movie tanks and the game is good; the movie's good and the game's terrible; or they both suck). If the intended result is failure - mission accomplished!

Now publishers are making many titles multi-platform, taking a shotgun approach (after all, you're bound to hit something). Whoever said, "Can we do any worse if we just trusted the creative folks entirely instead of the publishers?" has a good point. Of course, nobody can really tell in advance what will sell and what won't (though it's usually easier to guess what shouldn't). Publishers likely go for the movie licensing because it's viewed as a slam dunk for profits. Good, bad, doesn't really matter because whatever they put out will sell on brand recognition alone to the masses.

What needs to happen as a whole (which very well may be impossible) is for decision makers to be much more selective than they are now when deciding what games to create/publish. If 4 out of 5 games lose money, that shouldn't be acceptable to anyone in a position of authority. If more oversight's or planning is what's needed, then that's what needs to happen to ensure projects have a better shot at being profitable (obviously, what's needed will likely vary from case to case). Since publisher and developer self-interests don't usually seem to sync-up, it's the developers who will have to take most of the burden on this since they stand the most to lose.

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This thread's been moribund for about 2 years, but I was intrigued by the post, so thought I'd throw my two cents in (the same debate still plays out in the gaming industry).

I do think that, as the art requirements have made it more and more expensive to produce a commercially viable game (economists call it "higher barriers to entry"), the frequency of risk-taking--and thus the quality of innovation--have both suffered. It's sad, because at bottom, the best games I've ever played are the ones with great gameplay, and graphics that didn't suck so badly they compromised the game play.

But I come from a slightly older audience. I'd suspect that there's a lot more purchasing power in the under-25 segment of the industry these days, as opposed to the crowd that's more than a quarter-century old. I think, for a whole variety of different options, that generation simply doesn't want gameplay without lots of sensory stimulation.

Same reason older sports fans are more likely to appreciate a team that wins through great teamwork, while younger people just want to see the most sensational, vivid highlight clip anybody can imagine.

Game design is CLEARLY an art, and not a science. Asking business types to invest in art for popular, commercial consumption is a very difficult sell--they just don't operate that way. If people could produce great art through an easy formula, or a specific, step-by-step approach ever time, there'd be a lot more great art in the world!

Computer programming, while it pretends to be a science, is currently just a fledgling science--it's in about the same place as phrenology was in the early 18th Century!

I say this based on a half-decade's experience serving in a Corporate Finance role helping to oversee ~$200M in technology projects a year. Investors and the Finance types who control the purse strings don't understand IT projects, and most of them don't really understand IT project management.

This is why the industry studies all suggest that somewhere between 40% and 75% of all IT projects in Corporate America end up seriously over budget, behind schedule, and/or with reduced scope.

You take all the uncertainties around software design, and then introduce all the uncertainties around producing art for commercial popular consumption, and it's not entirely surprising that it's so hard to convince most publishers to innovate aggressively.

I'm not sure that we'll see a new "Renaissance in game development and game play innovation" until another twist or turn of the technology lowers those barriers to entry and makes artwork MUCH cheaper again.

But that's a discussion for another time. I don't think the gaming industry is hopelessly broken, it's just driving on some bumpy roads right now!!

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